CHAPTER 26: DEATH’S GRASP

A few minutes earlier, back on the other side of the battlefield.

The three gaping maws opened before us, already vomiting that low roar that heralded incineration. My breath caught, unable to imagine anything but the end. Elyra tightened her lance, Kael froze, Ayame had sent the Black Hounds against us as if to form a last bulwark.

And then, the world’s voice chimed.

— [Level 25 reached.]

— [Genesis: Level 3.]

— [Oblivion: Level 3.]

I suffocated. My stomach turned, and the words came out on their own, before I even had time to think:

— "Thank you... girls..."

I knew. Fuck, I knew it came from them, from the other side of the battlefield. Their blood, their sweat, their screams... that was what pushed me to level 25.

My fingers trembled, but my thoughts cleared. Genesis, level 3... I felt it. No need for explanations: I could now generate several things at once. And I could see, more clearly too, the path of my mana, like a burning river I could channel to waste less of it.

— "...Genesis."

I pointed at the dragons. In each of their putrid maws I materialized a small object, simple but monstrous in effect: a muzzle of dark steel, shaped to withstand heat, sealed to contain pressure. I knew the molecular structure, I had memorized the mix of carbon and alloy that held at high temperature. The cost was lower... but the pain in my veins made me howl.

The maws snapped shut.

A breath built.

And then—

BOOM!

All three heads exploded at once. Geysers of black flame burst back, throwing flesh and bone in a burning rain. The shockwave nearly blew me away, my eardrums screamed, my body pitched backward.

I fell back to my knees. My mana... fuck, I had given too much. My vision blurred, my hands shook like an old man’s, and Aurelia nearly slipped from my grip.

— "Kaito!" Ayame’s voice, clear, firm, cracked through the turmoil.

I looked up. She had placed herself in front of me, scythe raised, the Black Hounds forming a wall around us. The mass of demons was already throwing itself at us, howling to protect their necromancer master.

I tried to get up, Aurelia in hand, but my legs refused. My lance vibrated in my limp fingers as if it belonged to someone else.

I struck once, clumsily. A ghoul’s carcass exploded, but my arm emptied immediately afterward. I was dead weight.

Ayame pivoted toward me, her hair plastered to her cheeks with sweat and blood. Her brown eyes, grave, nevertheless burned with unwavering authority.

— "Meditate!" she shouted. "Do as Maeron taught us! Breathe the ambient mana! Recover it!"

A demon sprang up behind her, maw wide open. She swung her scythe in a dry backhand, and its head flew off before I even had time to blink.

Then she continued, implacable:

— "We’ll protect you. Don’t forget, Kaito... you’re the trump card."

My breath stopped.

Fuck. Me? The trump card? While I shivered like a wreck in the middle of hell?

I resigned myself to closing my eyes.

At first there was only noise. The howls, the flames, the hooves, the metal shattering bones. It drilled into my head, pounded in my chest. Then... something gave. As if my eardrums had imploded.

Silence.

A perfect silence. No more cries, no more war. Even my own breathing faded.

And then I saw them.

Golden filaments. Lines that danced in the air like luminous veins, winding between the shattered stones, crossing bodies, sinking into the dust. Every particle of mana vibrated like gold dust, suspended in the black air of blood and ash. It spread everywhere, infinite, as if the whole world were a fabric of light, and I stood in the middle.

My body surrendered. My arms dropped, my lance almost slipped. I was naked before the universe, vulnerable, exposed. And yet... I felt pulled.

The golden lines drew closer, slowly, then wrapped around me. They brushed my burning skin, slipped through my pores, my veins, my lungs. Each inhalation brought back an incandescent river, each exhalation made it flow more smoothly.

I saw the path. I saw it, fuck! The flow, the channels, the faults where I’d always been losing my mana. Gaping leaks, absurd. And now... closed, little by little, by this golden net that infiltrated my body like divine sutures.

I was no longer in the mud, nor amidst the screams. I was suspended in a space without ground, without sky, only this mesh of light, alive, throbbing. And I, at the center, sucking, breathing, drinking.

My stomach stopped screaming. My chest loosened. My blood no longer thudded at my temples but rolled like a warm, calm stream.

Surely thanks to my SSS blessing rank, but a few minutes had been enough. No more.

And then my eyes opened.

The racket came back at once. BOOM! An explosion went off right to my left, lifting a rain of demonic flesh that splashed my cheek. The howls flooded my ears again, the breath of black fire burned my nostrils.

But I got up. More steady. My body still vibrated, but in a new way. I had air, I had mana. Not much, but enough to hold on.

I wiped the blood running down my forehead, my trembling fingers gripping Aurelia again.

— "...Thank you, Maeron..." I breathed, voice low, hoarse.

I could continue.

Ayame set a firm hand on my shoulder, her kimono clinging to her skin, and I smelled her fragrance, a strange mix of jasmine and blood. Her brown eyes, grave, vibrated with icy determination.

— "Let’s go help the others."

I nodded, unable to respond otherwise. The Black Hounds still around us, panting, covered in black blood that dripped from their weapons. We advanced. One step after another, in the mud of flesh and flames, toward the heart of the massacre.

And there, I saw them.

An Oni already lay on the ground, ripped apart like a carcass of meat too tender. Its open torso let hang strips of still-smoldering entrails.

Further on, Thorn roared.

His body... fuck. He had doubled in size, veins bulging like red cords under his scarlet skin. His eyes were no longer human, his fangs jutted from a twisted mouth. Berserker was his blessing. I understood it instinctively, no explanation needed: he was no longer a man, he was a demon of flesh and hatred.

He charged the second Oni with a brutality that made the ground shake. His fingers sank into the giant’s arm, and with an atrocious crack, he tore the whole joint off. The Oni’s scream covered even the catapults’ crash.

— "Die, bastard!" Thorn howled, splattered with black blood.

And suddenly, a shadow leapt behind the Oni. Kael. Black. Blurred. His daggers flashed for a fraction of a second before sinking into the monster’s back. The cry choked into a gurgle, and the mass collapsed, trembling.

Elyra then arrived like a crimson comet. Her lance vibrated with a burning red aura, and in a perfect, fluid movement, she cut the last Oni’s throat clean. The head rolled in the mud, blood geysering out. She panted, her chest heaving in her already-slit corset, her gray eyes still electrified with rage.

It was over. The Oni were dead.

And there... the necromancer.

He stepped back. His chains lashed the air, his empty eye-sockets shone with a sickly green. He was already turning his heels, fleeing like a rat.

— "Oh no... you’re not going anywhere, fucker," Kael spat.

His body almost dissolved into shadow, and in a second he reappeared behind Necroth. Two daggers. Two flashes of steel. Planted deep in his back.

The necromancer’s eyes widened. I saw it, I swear: the life left his gaze. His body pitched forward, heavy, grotesque, and collapsed into the mud.

We stood frozen. Thorn, panting, mouth full of blood. Elyra, still covered in entrails. Me, breathless. And Kael, standing, a crooked smile, his daggers still dripping.

It was finished.

— "That’s strange..." Ayame murmured.

Her tone chilled me. I turned to her. Her brown eyes had narrowed, as if she felt a truth we could not see.

— "What?" I stammered.

She opened her mouth.

— "...No level."

My gut tightened. My blood froze.

— "HE ISN’T—"

A sharp noise. A brutal slash.

I turned in an instant. Something rolled on the ground, bouncing in the bloody mud. A head.

Kael’s head.

His eyes still wide, staring at the horizon, his lips fixed in a rictus. His headless body toppled to its knees before collapsing with a dull sound.

And behind him... the necromancer.

His body upright, still pierced by the daggers, but his eyes... empty. And yet, his sewn lips split into a grotesque, demonic smile.

His voice growled, deep, fetid, resonating like a rasp from beyond the grave:

— "Do not underestimate my control over death, you pathetic humans..."

I suffocated. My blood chilled. My hand trembling on Aurelia.

Fuck... Kael...

The world’s voice fell like a guillotine, clear, absurd in the middle of the carnage:

— [Level 26 reached.]

The girls, surely, but that passed over my head.

Instead something burst in my chest. Rage. Not the cold anger you plan with—the brute beast, the red thirst to kill. It took me whole, tore a growl from me that was lost in the crash. Around me, the others caught it too, as if the very air swelled with hatred. We began to run, one front, one howl: straight at that fucking necromancer.

I was going to rip his heart out. I was going to hang him by his entrails, reduce him to compost. My lance vibrated in my hand like a promise.

I wouldn’t stand idle. Genesis, thread— I thought, brutal. Without thinking, I sculpted a shard: not an elegant blade, but a compact piece of shit, black and shiny, a nail of alloy and mana, pure density. It shot from my palm like a stone vomited by the earth; the very air whistled around it. I catapulted it at the necromancer—not to kill, just to touch, to mark the damn blow that would prove I still existed.

The projectile cut through the smoke, struck Necroth in the flank with a dull metallic thud. It made a hollow sound—a sharp hit against malformed armor—and a spray of black shards flew in a rain. My body convulsed with the effort.

And then, as if a veil tore, I realized there was someone even more determined. It wasn’t me the supposed trump card, not Ayame, not Thorn. It was Elyra.

At first I heard only a whisper, a breath gliding between metal and fury:

— "Art of the crimson lance... ninth movement Bloodset Twilight."

It was calm—almost too calm—and at the same time it was an ordinance of storm. I had seen Elyra dance with her lance before, but never like this. She bent her knees slightly, her hips arced perfectly, and her gray eyes became blades.

Then came the mastered chaos.

She launched like a comet. I didn’t see all the strikes: my brain didn’t have time, my eyes tried to follow and failed, only sparks, glints. Her lance drew arcs of red in the air, streaks of fire, sigils that tore flesh before you realized they had existed. One strike, a whirlwind, a reversal—ten moves a second, a chain so pure it became inhuman. She sliced the air, and each time the shaft passed, matter itself seemed to tear: skin, bone, corrupted metal, everything flew in shreds.

I saw the scene as through the mouth of a cannon: a crimson-and-silver silhouette, movements so rapid dust formed halos; a rain of fragments of flesh rebounding in slow motion; a dry, deep crack, the artistry of violence.

There was a sound, profoundly disgusting—a gurgle of ripped meat, the morose sucking of a tendon separated from bone—and then the fall.

The necromancer no longer existed as a man. Elyra had reduced him into pieces so clean, so precise, that the butchery had something architectural: detached arms, shattered spine, head thrown back like an extinguished lantern. The entrails began to fall, tumbled into a tangle, covered the mud in a bright red, then calmed.

And with the fall of his master, the rest followed. The dead silhouettes that had stood by the thousands, that had marched in waves—black puppets obeying a rotten will—stilled, then collapsed. As if someone cut the strings one by one: bones clicking, heads rolling, armor sagging. A tide of corpses fell with a muffled sound, a delicious hush of death that crushes your eardrums.

In my mind the world’s voice roared, faster this time, a frantic run of numbers:

— [Level 27 reached.]

— [Level 28 reached.]

— [Level 29 reached.]

— [Level 30 reached.]

I stood planted, breath short, hands covered in blood that stuck to the lance. Everything spun around me and within me: the pain, the heat, the stench, and that burning hearth that finally dimmed. The golden glows of mana could still dance in the air, but they were now less urgent, less hungry. We had blown up the source. This time it was done.

I looked at Elyra. She held her lance, straight as a statue. Her torn armor slapped against her thighs, her breath was heavy, and at the corner of her mouth there was a thin smile—not grandiose triumph, just the fatigue of someone who has completed a work only she knew to perfection.

I didn’t have time to stick back into the mud. Ayame, Thorn, Elyra, the survivors of the unit and I moved on without a word, like machines on a massacre line. We pierced the last ranks of demons and monsters, the undead having already collapsed with their master.

Each step left behind blown-apart bodies, crushed monstrous maws, halved armors. The breath of fire, the impacts of stones, the crash of metal—all vibrated down to my bones. Sometimes a blow too close made me stagger, as if my entrails would spill into the mud. But we advanced, relentless.

Thorn roared, each blow pulverizing torsos, his arms spattered with demonic blood.

Ayame, a maternal and murderous silhouette, reaped in bursts, her scythe slicing two bodies in one movement.

Elyra spun, the lance drawing crimson arcs in the dust-and-ash-saturated air.

I followed, panting, planting Aurelia more by instinct than will.

Then the ground trembled with a monstrous rumble. We raised our eyes.

In the distance, behind the tide of flames and smoke, the giant staggered. His enormous body was nothing but a mutilated colossus: his left arm torn from its shoulder, his right hanging in tatters, and his pierced belly spewing torrents of blackened flesh. His howl shook the whole fortress, but it was only an animal in agony.

Then, a light cleaved the dust.

Albrecht.

His sword blazed with a runic aura and drew an arc of scarlet light. The giant bent, bellowed one last time, and his huge head was torn off clean. It rolled, crushing dozens of demons in its path, before coming to rest in a geyser of blood. The decapitated body collapsed, shaking the battlefield as if the earth itself cracked under its weight.

Dust lashed our faces, my ears rang. And in my skull, the world’s voice snapped, cold and mechanical:

— [Level 31 reached.]

— [Level 32 reached.]

— [Level 33 reached.]

A breath escaped me, almost an bitter laugh. Well played, girls. Even from here I knew it was them, that without their madness we’d be nowhere.

We continued to cut down the remaining demons, but I saw Ayame stop, her dark eyes fixed on some invisible point. A veil passed over her face, her hand clenched on the scythe handle.

— "...No. Something’s wrong..." she murmured. Then, louder, hoarse: "FAST! We must recover the girls and flee!"

The sky split.

A white light descended slowly, pure and icy. Not the sun, not dawn: a winged silhouette, an angel or its simulacrum, whose glassy wings sparkled with dying sparks.

My blood froze.

Ayame screamed again, this time without hesitation:

— "QUICK! We must go help them!"